Update to last week's BestBuy Shenanigan. They refused to refund me after not delivering me the stuff I ordered after a so-called "investigation".
Update to last week's BestBuy Shenanigan. They refused to refund me after not delivering me the stuff I ordered after a so-called "investigation".
I'm not sure if anyone cares about an update, but I wanna just vent a bit.
I got the email (as shown in the screenshot) on June 25 very late at night.
Welp, I filed a Chargeback immedialy upon reading that. Guess that's one store I can't go to anymore... 🤷♂️
Still have yet to hear back from the bank on their process, but they say they'll "temporarily credit the balance" while they "investigate".
If my Bank decides to screw with me, the next update is probably gonna be in "c/ActuallyInfuriating" (I hope everything goes through fine, fingers crossed)
I did some online searching, and found like a few different posts from Reddit with others saying they got the same "completed investigation... unable to provide refund or replacement" bullshit.
They didn't even give me a chance to send the video evidence. The rep on the phone said they would "contact me there are any updates or request further information", but didn't tell me where to send the video to. Nor did anyone contacted me to request it.
What I think happened with the so-called "investigation" is that, BestBuy just deferred it to Doordash, and they must've looked at the picture taken by the driver and just sided with their driver to protect their bottom line, and BestBuy just accepted that as an explanation.
Pictures are stationary lmfao. That proves nothing. Only that the package was at the door (which was actually a neighbor's door btw), not that the driver didn't just snatched it immediately after.
Tbh, I doubt things would change much even if they got the video, they don't take this seriously at all. They would've just said the video was blurry and deny refund.
Btw: I ended up ordering a different laptop from Amazon and they shipped with UPS and it arrived safely, with all security seals intact. I don't like how Amazon is taking over everything and have become monopolistic, but at least their stuff actually arrives...
I really don't know how we got to a stage where delivery companies can just throw something in the general direction of your house and call it "delivered".
This is why everything should be bought with credit card, because then the contract is between them and the store, and they've certainly got better lawyers than you. Chargebacks scare most shops into just sending another.
Credit Card Charge back.
They already did. See the top of their post
I made the mistake of buying a 14tb external drive there that I needed that day and couldn't afford to wait since I had a drive failing. Little did I know they dropped their return policy to 15 days but even bringing it back on day 8 after the drive burned up from overheating from copying 14tb of shit they rejected it and said that it was "all scratched up" because it has the crappy piano black finish you can scratch with your nail.
Got it replaced through the manufacturer and pretty much opted to never go back to a best buy after that. Used to be one of my favorite stores but all the anti consumer bullshit is driving it into the ground. Made a minor issue way more pain than it ever needed to be
Best buy had one of the lowest lows and best recoveries I had ever seen while working there. The new French CEO made it about customer service, and I saw people and teens who had never considered going to a best buy start going. Stock price went up, people were happy.
Then the board ousted him a few years ago and made it all about profits, going right back to where they were in the downward spiral, completely unaware of the irony. I hope they fail now. They could have come out on top but greed took over again.
It's likely intentional. What's the point of a good reputation if you don't milk it for profit? Bestbuy alternates between good and bad. Build a good reputation, the cut corners for profit for several years until people notice while banking that profit. Then restart the good reputation.
Terrible, terrible place.
I was so much happier when I realized that Staples had almost as much tech stuff. Staples staff answers all my dumb questions clearly and never tries to oversell.
Or if you're in Canada: London Drugs actually has decent service in their computer dept
Seconded. This seems like a gamers nexus story ready to happen.
Post the video to the internet. Explain what it is make sure to credit the two companies for their involvement. Don't stop at one post and hope it catches on.
For every person like you that won't take the shit, there are many more that will just give up. Just like unemployment and insurance claims - denial is the first step in protecting the bottom line.
If nobody accepted such bollocks, it would be more economical to actually investigate, provide service & improve processes - rather than trying to bin complaints at the first hurdle.
Prime (lol) example over here is with Amazon not making it easy to return shit after 30 days, by hiding all the easy return options at that point. You can still do it by contacting customer service and they will generally acquiesce, but just having the extra steps there is enough to save a ton of money by keeping the uninformed in the dark.
Fuck em. Make it difficult for them. Be the goddamn squeakiest wheel you can possibly be.
Tangentially related, SSDI disability process does the same thing.
A bazillion hoops with no hope of doing it all correct unless you have a lawyer. Each step of the process is prolonged with denials, extentions, hearings, appointments, reviews, etc.
You can't work during the process, so if they take long enough they can force your hand. Can you actually find some gainful activity? You better because you have bills and it's year 3 now. Private disability insurance runs out after 2 years or so.
Oh look, you happen to be able to do a job. Looks like you aren't disabled. Denied.
For every person like you that won’t take the shit, there are many more that will just give up. Just like unemployment and insurance claims - denial is the first step in protecting the bottom line.
This is the crucial part. Same reason many brands have shifted from giving discounts to "rebates". You have to jump through a few hoops yourself to get it, it's not automatic. And that immediately results in a decent % of customers simply not even bothering, which is exactly what manufacturers are banking on.
sometimes it goes wrong for companies doing this
That decent percent is in fact roughly 60%, in my industry. At least according to what my vendor reps tell me.
Only 4 in 10 people even bother to attempt to do their rebates. The manufacturers love that, because it allows them to put a giant "$2000 OFF!!!! viamailinrebate" on their marketing literature and that gets eyeballs on the ad and feet in the door, but they know damn well they won't actually have to pay out on the majority of those promos and in fact they don't even budget with the expectation that they will.
Yes &
For every person like you
There’s at least 1/10 of a person doing their best to commit fraud. Maybe they’ll pretend they found a hair in their food, maybe worse:
Source of that is a terrible rap song, Punchmade Dev - Wire Fraud Tutorial
These are the kind of criminals support agents deal with all day long. Then you and I come along and nobody trusts us.
Well whatever is after Veo 3 should make all our lives easier. Hey we can always face-to-face barter whatever we whittle!
Have you thought about sending this story with the video to local news? I'm sure they will love it and negative publicity will force BB to resolve it.
The crap leave it on the doorstep and hope no one nicks it delivery wasn't a thing in my country until amazon made it a thing. Don't make out they're the good guys. They're absolutely not.
TBF they sometimes hide it from public view by putting it in the bin - trashcan in the US - on bin collection day. Genius.
First time they did that for us, they put it in the paper recycling wheelie bin, which was definitely the cleanest bin, and the easiest to get it out of because it was 3/4 full, but it was in the run up to Christmas and it was very camouflaged amongst all the other already opened amazon packages. No note, of course.
Seems like you're in the UK too.
Yeah, this was never a thing until Amazon made it one.
Thankfully, the law is very unambiguous about this, and if a parcel is left outside and then stolen before it gets into your hands (unless you specifically asked for it to be left outside) then you are entitled to a refund or replacement.
Amazon play the numbers game and figure that replacing x number of packages costs less than needing their drivers to bring all the undeliverable packages back and try again a different day.
It's not a cool precedent though and I very much dislike it being normalised.
I had a similar thing happen with Best Buy. I ordered a laptop which showed as "delivered" but never arrived. In fact I was at home the whole day they claimed it was delivered and nobody even came. Best Buy had no proof it was delivered other than a tracking number, and wouldn't send me a new one or refund me. The employee on the phone told me to just call the police and report it as stolen. I escalated it to a supervisor and asked them to listen to the original conversation, and explained that it's not my responsibility to get the laptop - it's their responsibility to ship it to me. I also at the same time disputed it with my credit card. The end result was someone at Best Buy calling me back and apologizing for the employee's mistake, and my credit card company saying they refunded my money, as well as telling me I could keep the laptop if it ever arrived later. So it ended up working out. I just had to escalate it and be the squeaky wheel.
That's messed up. Just on the basis of it being a picture of a different door is grounds for a refund, that clearly shows they did not deliver it to the address they were paid to deliver it to. Super frustrating and I hope it all gets worked out for you.
Did you report doordash to the police?
This does seem like an important step. Like yeah, absolutely report this to the vendor but a theft also occurred so at least get a file going. Providing a police file # might have been enough to get them to refund as well
I just got done reading the original post.
I don’t know if this is the right advice, or if this advice will help anyone, but if you have the delivery driver on camera mis-delivering the product, then stealing the product, I would have first contacted the delivery service/Best Buy with a photo of the front of your house with the house numbers clearly visible to say that the product was not delivered to your home. Full stop. The package was not delivered correctly. If BB/DD insist on that the package was delivered to me, I’d file a police report. Police report in hand, I’d respond to BB/DD with the police report and video of the incident and request to either be refunded or to receive the product you paid for.
Basically, give them as little wiggle room as possible before you invoke professionals into the mix who can advocate for you.
You shouldn't have to do that much work for this, just charge it back and find another company to do business with. And make sure everyone you know, knows how scummy these businesses are.
My take is that this guy did business with Best Buy, not Door Dash. I would never do business with Door Dash and I'm never doing business with Best Buy after hearing this story. It's up to Best Buy to wrangle their contractors, not OP. I'd also just do the chargeback tbh. The credit card company always sides with their customers unless it's obviously a scam, and if there's video evidence, the credit card company has no problem taking their money back from Best Buy. They have no reason to choose Best Buy because they have no other option if they want to keep accepting credit cards. OP has dozens of credit card and banking services to choose from instead.
The police do not care about porch pirates.
nor do they care about small time hit and run stuff. Yet I filed a police report with photographic evidence (they wouldn't let me upload video) from my dash cam of the moment a driver backed into me in a drive thru and damaged my bumper. This is not because I'm a snitch, it's because if I ever want to go to insurance about it then they will demand a police report to prove it happened.
Amazon stuff sometimes arrives. For instance, it's going on 7 months by now I think and they still haven't found my camera.
This is the sad reality of every company everywhere trying to turn their delivery operation into a "gig" position. Amazon does it, too. Their delivery contractors-who-are-totally-not-employees steal valuable items from deliveries all the time.
Anyway, you are certain to win your chargeback. Banks side with their cardholders more often than not, and Best Buy is going to have to provide proof positive that you received your item. "We handed it off to Doordash and then washed our hands of it" is not going to cut the mustard, there.
(We have to deal with chargebacks in my business, too. Defending ourselves is a pain in the ass because we have to provide indisputable documentation that the client's order was fulfilled. The issuing bank always starts from the default position of their cardholder being a saint and all retail businesses automatically being scammers. A small subset of people will fraudulently dispute a charge for a big ticket purchase just because they feel this is a way to weasel out of paying for it, and usually they've been emboldened by the fact that they've tried it before and gotten away with it.)
Best Buy is the worst about this stuff! I’m still bitter bc a few years back they delivered a brand new washing machine that didn’t work. I asked them to come back and pick it up to exchange it for something else and their pick up crew didn’t record that they took the machine back. Luckily they left me a slip showing they picked it up. But it still took me 9 months of fighting with the store to get a refund and I was accused by the manager of creating a “loss issue.” After they finally refunded me they still charged me a pro-rated amount for having the warranty for 9 months bc they didn’t cancel it the same week they picked up the machine.
What worked for me was to go to a different Best Buy store (bc the manager was a dick) and show them the evidence in person and ask for help to resolve or escalate the issue.
But it still took me 9 months of fighting with the store to get a refund and I was accused by the manager of creating a “loss issue.”
9 months?
I mean, does your country have strong customer protections? I know some countries don't and you'd have to deal with the merchant. But if your country does have consumer protections, you probably should've filed a dispute, because they have to be filed within 60 days in the banks I've used, so I would not have waited that long because that's kinda just gambling on the store playing nice.
Go to your attorney general's website and fill out a form for a complaint. Check the box says you don't mind getting the news involved and detail everything you've done so far that hasn't worked.
I worked in customer service escalations for a large company. We had a couple of dedicated people who handled inquiries on complaints sent to the AG, skipping several tiers of support if someone from the AG's office asked about it. Usually it was some bored office adminstrator who'd share the customer's complaint and await a response from the company and make sure everything was above the board, and largely exist as a mediator between the customer and the company. Involving the AG is a very good step to take in a customer service failure on any kind of order/RMA problems, especially if you're out money
Honestly I would try reaching out to some local or regional news networks to see if they want to run your story. I’m sure they’ll love also having the video because they can show it during the segment. It sucks that it has to suddenly become a PR matter for the companies involved for them to give a shit.
If your bank fucks you, small claims court time and new bank time.
That means BestBuy effectively gets a $700+ dollars interest free loan from me for a few months, since courts take months.
If you exhaust all other options, what else can you do? The suggestion of filing complaints with your state AG and any applicable groups would also be a good move - good suggestion from Fugly!
Actually, now that I think about it, you could try contacting higher ups at Best Buy to see if they would make it right, make noise on social media, and consider contacting local news if you're up for it. Putting pressure on them like that might speed up the resolution.
Maybe reach out to your state AG before going the small claims court. Report them for anti-consumer behavior. Frequently, the notice saying they’ve received a complaint and asking for what’s up is enough to get them to change tune immediately.
Is this the thing where they sent it by doordash?? Wtf!?
I have an order arriving today from Best Buy! It's being handled by DoorDash... 🤞 Sorry to hear about your ordeal. Not fun. I think I'm going to avoid BB purchases if this is how they handle deliveries now.
have an order arriving today from Best Buy! It’s being handled by DoorDash… 🤞
OMG you need to give us an update on if it arrives. I hope you have better luck, if not, you could alway make another post on this comm 😉
Nobody should ever EVER buy anything or do anything from best buy. They will fuck you over and they pry on non tech people into making them buy overpriced garbage.
Not sure if this works anymore, but worth a try. Get on the phone with the 1-800 during business hours and escalate, ask for consumer relations. Make sure you tell each person that you talk to that you'll never be shopping at best buy again if this isn't resolved, so they know you're serious and will properly escalate you. 15 years ago, that would solve any problem. People who absolutely scammed Best Buy would still get replacements plus a gift card for their trouble, at least once.
Sorry this happened to you. Don't just assume the chargeback is going to solve things without any more effort, the machines involved might fuck you over if you don't take steps. Credit card might side with vendor if you don't submit evidence better than theirs. Your case seems cut and dry since it wasn't even the right address, but you might still need to get that police report filled. Like the other poster said, you're just getting the case#, as frustrating as it is, expecting anything else would just be silly. All of these things show you are serious and not a scammer. Scammers wouldn't try this shit because it would put them in jail the second or third time they did it without any evidence. You have evidence, but the machine is tuned to ignore it until escalation. Fucking lame, I know.
I got a samsung phone last year with a 200 bucks rebate. You better believe I cashed that in right quick ("while supplies last").
Take it up with local law enforcement??? lol
Call the cops on Best Buy.
Well, this would be more calling the cops on the DoorDash driver.
My point is, you call the cops on BestBuy to make it more annoying for them.
Will they refund you if you do in fact go to the police? This is a pretty incredible claim to take at face value.
The "libertarian paradise" idea is that as far as Best Buy is concerned, the item was delivered. If the DoorDash delivery driver happened to turn right around and steal the package, that's a separate crime and a matter for the police to deal with, same as if anyone else had stolen it. And it's OP's fault for not picking the box up sooner, during the 3 seconds it was sitting on the porch. The porch that wasn't even theirs. So anyway, the libertarian solution is for OP to contact police to track down the thief and either recover the stolen item or sue the thief for monetary compensation. Best Buy is innocent and no refund is coming. DoorDash is innocent too because they contracted with an independent contractor to deliver the item, and what the contractor does after the item has been delivered is not their responsibility.
This is why I don't actually blame them for wanting a police report, the laptop will have gone through their system, been scanned and processed, all the way through to final delivery. Looking at the information they have, I don't blame them one bit for being sceptical.
This is an extraordinary event.
OP, if you do go over to actually infuriating, could you post a link to it so we can still follow the story?